Computer Braille and the Future of Braille If braille is to remain a useful tool it must remain under the control of braille users. This can only be accomplished if the keepers of braille codes consider the current practices of its harbingers of the future: those who access electronic information with refreshable braille display (RBD) systems. MEMS (Micro-Electro- Mechanical System) technology will reduce the price of braille displays by a factor of ten in only a few years and all braille readers in developed countries will have the option of RBDs in no more than a decade. Small portable braille displays will be as ubiquitous as cell phones are now. RBD users move at will between braille and print. They write braille and print with equal ease via braille and standard keyboards; they read transcribed braille and literal print with equal ease on their braille displays. One of my blind friends finds it most convenient to use his standard keyboard to compose emails to me in print while proofing them in contracted braille. The key to facility with both braille and print is the one-to-one transliteration commonly referred to as either computer braille or Grade 0 braille. Of course, since the Basic Latin character set used to transmit electronic information is comprised of 94 characters, six-dot braille is not always sufficient for computer braille; 31 extra cells with an added dot seven are used when necessary to distinguish small from capital letters or to represent all the special characters uniquely. Users of the Nemeth code have an advantage in switching to computer braille because of the considerable overlap between the Nemeth code and the standard computer braille tables. Users of maths codes which, like the proposed UEBC, employ upper numbers or multi-cell symbols for standard characters like plus and minus have no choice but to define a computer braille table which represents these symbols differently from their maths code. Facility with both braille and print promotes general independence and better employment opportunities. As for jobs, it hardly seems necessary to point out the great number of jobs--from secretary to computer programmer--that require the ability to read and write printed characters directly. As for independence, not so long ago, all braille users were dependent on sighted humans to provide access to print. Now--for those with access to electronic information--reading machines (OCR), screenreaders, transcribing software, online embossers and braille displays have replaced this earlier direct dependence with an indirect dependence on software and hardware developers. Although there isn't much the average person can do about hardware problems, the ability to directly read markup languages, if not programming languages, considerably reduces dependence on the developers of screenreaders and of transcribing software. This is significant because the relatively small market for these applications negatively impacts both quality and availability. The key, of course, is the conceptual similiarity of print markup languages to braille codes. Although these languages are not as concise as official braille codes and were not, of course, designed to produce aesthetically pleasing sequences of braille cells, they do nevertheless function as braille codes in being complete, linear, and plain text representations of formatted print materials including those with non-ASCII characters. I will close with two illustrative examples. Just the other day a blind friend told me that he'd been temporarily stymied in his attempt to read some important information on the Internet when his screenreader balked. Luckily, he was able to read the HTML source directly on his braille display. In fact, he not only read what he needed, he discovered why the screenreader had stopped and reported the problem to the developers. (The problem was the screenreader's failure to ignore an unexpected extraneous linefeed.) Computer braille allows braille users to read and write mathematics in LATeX source. Many braille users have learned LATeX and use it to communicate with sighted teachers and peers. Unfortunately, although LATeX was designed to be fairly easy to write, it is a typesetting markup language and the source was not designed for convenience of direct reading. It is, however, preferable to nothing.